For the past three months, I have been living in Dial-up Town, the internet equivalent of Radiator Springs; once a place frequently travelled through, but now a sleepy little backwater bypassed by the fast and heavy traffic of the broadband interstate.

This is not by choice - far from it. It's where I ended up as a consequence of my internet service provider's general upgrade to their service. The much-heralded free increase of speed from two megabytes to a maximum of eight took place on May 17th, and I have not been able to download a single webpage since that time - at least, not at home, and not on broadband.

The experience has been instructive in so many, many ways. I know far more about broadband provision than I ever imagined I'd care to. During the course of my more-than-40 phone calls to customer service, I've eliminated every possible confounder; if you suffer from insomnia just write to me and I'll send you a list of the things I've done - all of them more than once - and you'll be out like a light within five minutes. I have also developed a pretty clear picture of how my ISP's technical support operation is set up and just what it can't do. Things like operating a section devoted to solving recalcitrant problems, or locating and fixing a fault that lies in the telephone line or in the exchange, seem to be beyond the company's capability.

But far more depressing and sinister has been my discovery that broadband turns out to have been addictive - at least for me. I'd become a research junky, taking full advantage of the online services of various libraries to "shop" for interesting academic articles. I flattered myself that this was a cheaper and more edifying way of passing time than browsing for things to buy.

I'd also become a news junky, reading not just the Guardian, but also the Washington Post, and more cursorily the LA Times, the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Le Monde. Then there were the numerous political blogs, and various activist websites. There was really quite a lot to get through for the public minded citizen.

In retrospect, the problem wasn't the time I spent doing this, but rather the lack of satisfaction that it brought me. Browsing is compelling yet ultimately unsatisfying - precisely the emotional combination that makes addiction what it is.

And I think the compulsiveness has to do with the way in which broadband browsing can make you instantly aware of the size and complexity of the problem - any problem - while not doing quite the same thing about the solution. You seek but do not find, and so you seek again. The most alarming part is the sense that, for all our ideas that the internet promotes political activism, it is actually a way of giving us daily practice in coping with our political powerlessness.

When the world is swept into your consciousness, you discover (a) you're actually the size of an ant and (b) the solution to the problem lies more offscreen than on. It's always somewhere out of reach. The senses of urgency and of powerlessness are simultaneously and exponentially increased as one reads more and more. It's infuriating. I wonder if the medium itself doesn't contribute in this way to the belligerence people so often express in their postings.

Offscreen, an ant-sized life is lived more hopefully. What is ant-sized to an ant, after all?

I've found that, for me at any rate, it's not more information but more thinking that satisfies. With so many answers coming in onscreen, I forget what my question is. In browsing, my thoughts themselves become like a net, diffusely spread all over the place, but with no focus - scatterbrained in the truest sense of the word. Offline, the value of effort is restored; the afternoons spent writing letters or making calls or doing some one thing no longer seem of minute political value or social significance. I can read a book.

And speaking of life off-screen, I've got to go now. Must mail a letter to the PO box number that seems to be the only way my ISP's customer support unit can deal with complaints. I'm hoping to recover my three months' worth of pointless subscription fees - along with the £30 I've spent on telephone calls about my "free" upgrade.